The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette (Patreon)

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2018

Howdy, patrons!

Welcome to October! Or is it Orctober? OTTober? Octobear? Cockatielber? It's so hard to keep up with the species-themed months these days…

I'm happy to say that I've been making some progress on developing a regular writing practice, even if it happens in fits and starts. The big problem is that regular life is so overwhelming, all of the time, that by the time I sit down in the evenings with a bit of free time the only thing I have the energy to do is just...check out. At the same time, I realize that I've been doing that way too much; that having so many evenings disappear in a fog of willful vegetation isn't doing me much good, either. I won't deny that sometimes it's necessary to lay your burdens down and take an emotional vacation, but you'll never learn how to be stronger or more resilient if you don't push yourself a bit. 

So I'm doing my best to start small: 30 minutes a day, or 500 words a day. Often it's more than that, but that's the floor for me. I haven't been able to do this every day for a week straight yet, but I'm getting better at that and in the meantime I'm still writing more often than I ever have before. That's the most important thing.

This means that hopefully I'll be able to build a nice buffer for "Crushing The Competition" this month, which should buy me a bit of breathing room to work on an additional serial for you lovely patrons who are at the $10 level and up. It's something I've always wanted to do, but I haven't really been able to get it together to have one serial on a regular basis -- let alone two. For the second serial, I'm thinking that the story would be a bit more polished with longer chapters released once every two weeks. Committing to that means that I would be doing a lot more planning, writing a rough draft, sending it to beta readers, then editing at least once before the chapter goes up. I think if I can get into that rhythm, it'll help me develop a good process for editing the "main" serial and bundling it up for release on SoFurry say, once a month.

What do you guys think? The 'exclusive' serial would likely be "Boundaries" or "THE CULT OF MAXIMUS" (remember that one??), since I've already done a bit of work with them and I think they're good stories if I just took them a bit more seriously. Well, I take all of these stories seriously, but what I mean is...made sure that I made them as good as possible within a specific time-frame. 

We're settling into autumn here at the Ranch; the nights are getting delightfully cold and folks are starting to beat the drums of Halloween something fierce. I'm getting more comfortable with the routine here at my day job, and learning how to fit better within the culture here. One great thing so far is that all of the folks in my department are SERIOUSLY into Halloween, so this year I'll be getting my very first legitimate costume! I'll be going as Frodo Baggins, with a custom-tailored outfit, cape and all! Pictures, of course, when it arrives. I'm nervous but also excited -- I'm not quite sure what to do about the Hobbit feet (try finding some oversized, realistic feet in my skin tone) or pointed ears (ditto), but we'll have to see how the rest of the details might come together as the month progresses.

"Crushing The Competition" part 5 will be up tomorrow! We'll, at long last, figure out what the hell is going on with Amare in that box! I hope you're intrigued by the answer. :D Until then, patrons!!

-Jakebe